History Repeats Itself
by fridaynightfeature
Summary: A/U. The Doctor meets a young girl in an office while searching for the source of a tear in the fabric of reality. ***First attempt at fanfic. Lots of comments/critiques, please!
1. Chapter 1

_**She remembered eating breakfast this morning, sitting down on the lawn in front of the building. Silently she sat, her eyes following the occasional hurried student, books in hand and sleepy faces blurred in the distance. She watched the sun climb over the trees and the calm that could only be found on a college campus in the early hours of the weekend. A chilly breeze broke through and she wrapped her arms against herself. It was here, in this moment, that she realized how truly lonely she was.**_

* * *

"Just three more hours," she said as she stared at the clock above the door. With her head in her hands, she sighed deep and turned to the computer. Holly had spent most of the day sitting around since 8 a.m. and had seen no more than three people since she opened the office. Not surprising though; students had better things to do on a Saturday morning. She thought back on the moment where she had convinced herself that coming in for Saturday work was worth it; she'd get a weekday off from work, but truth be told, she had nothing else better to do.

She had spent the morning checking her emails and tapping her fingers on the desk along to a poorly orchestrated tune in her head. As students came in that morning, she straightened her blouse and wiped off her trousers, and put on a big smile. She only had a few quick minutes with each student and back out they went; back out to meet friends, to sleep, to lie in the thick summer air. But the last time she had seen someone was hours ago and she reminded herself again that other people had things to do on a Saturday.

The sun folded through the clouds in a slow dance between a pale shade and bright white light that bleached the bricks of the building and the empty sidewalks. She twisted her blonde hair around her fingers, watching the shine wax and wane. Holly had caught herself staring out without a single thought or point of interest. With a slight shake of her head, she rubbed her eyes looked back up at the clock. Three minutes. Only three minutes had passed from the last time she checked.

"Well, I won't be doing this again," she thought out loud. "At least at home I can go outside."

"Yeah, I wouldn't suggest that."

Holly spun her chair around so quickly, it took her a moment to figure out where the voice had come from. She stretched her head just above the desk partitions to find a young man in a ruddy brown suit coat leaned against the wall of the last cubicle in the room. His was the first genuine smile she had gotten the whole day and her heart lightened at the sight. She only had a moment to return the gaze before his brows furrowed and his face tightened.

"Very bright out. Too bright out." He spoke as he half-walked, half-ran down the hallway.

"And who are you?" Holly looked him over, with his mismatched clothes, the white sneakers, the unkempt hair.

"Mr. Smith, board member of the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service. UCAS. Just taking a look to make sure this fine institution is following our tariff system," he said as he flashed a badge in her direction and walked closer to the windows.

"The UCAS? I've never heard of that." Holly shifted the glasses on her face and turned to her computer, typing as he went on.

"You haven't? Oh, we're just a little organization that checks up on you bi-"

"Little organization? Says here you manage higher education applications, like admissions stuff. Can't be too little for that." He stared at her, obviously surprised that she was questioning him.

"Well... by little... I meant in terms of the great big system that is higher education. It's a fantastic thing."

"In England."

"Well, yes."

Holly's eyes narrowed. "This is America."

"Sorry, what?"

"This is America. The United States."

The man rushed over to Holly's desk with wide eyes. "Well how would you know?" He stammered as he slid between Holly and her computer and fumbled with the keys.

In her defense, Holly's voice got louder as she crossed her arms, leaned back and said, "How would I know what? Whether I'm in America or whether you're lying? Because either way, I'm pretty sure I'm right." Over her two years at the university, Holly had plenty of encounters with people that covered the spectrum from nice, to rude, to downright crazy. This 'Mr. Smith' was something else altogether though, and that worried her.

"Oh, as if I wouldn't know where I am. I just happened to end up thousands of miles away from where I wanted," he laughed, "no that's amateur." He rose from the computer and reached into his left coat pocket, eyes staying on her. Holly's body stiffened, not sure of what was about to happen. She watched the man's hands reach into the darkness and with a quick movement an odd metallic pen caught the fluorescent lights and shined bright in the beige room. Her sigh of relief filled the brief silence in the office. The man looked at her and smiled.

"Right. Now. Where were we?" He shook the pen a few times and a dim blue light flickered at its top. "What is today?"

"Saturday, August 18th."

"The year?"

"What?"

"The year! What year is it?"

Holly gathered her courage, stood up at her desk and tilted her head to the man with the pen. "Look, Mr. Smith. I don't know who you are or what you're doing, and obviously neither do you, so please leave. Or I'll have to call campus security."

"No point in that. They can't answer."

"What do you mean? Where else would they be?"

"Oh no, you misunderstood. They're there all right, just stuck an infinitesimally small time loop where their own awareness of said infinitesimally small time loop will drive them mad," he muttered as he held the pen to his ear.

"Okay, I'm definitely calling them." Holly's hand picked up the phone receiver and the man slammed his hands onto her desk. She dropped the phone and cringed at the awful banging sound as the plastic hit the wood.

"This is not some kind of joke. Something is going on here. Something very, very big." His mouth tightened and his eyes stared into Holly's, "and for me to say that, well, that's a bit of a big deal. Now what year is it?" Holly could feel fear rise in the form of heat from her toes up to her head, her heart quickened, and it seemed as if her mind had stopped working properly.

"It's 2012. S-s-sir, please jus-"

"Shhh. When I landed, I must have had just enough velocity or came in at just the right angle to break past the field. Someone is trying very hard to keep people from getting in. Or getting out." He paused and his eyes searched the room.

"Right, well... time to leave!" He grabbed Holly by the wrist and pulled, but she held fast.

"No way, I'm sorry but no. I'm definitely not going anywhere with some sort of lunatic." He grabbed her shoulders and looked into her widened eyes. "Listen to me, every single room in this place is being tampered with, one by one and every room is different. A classroom across campus is being terrorized by flying petri dishes, Campus Security has been replaying the same five minutes for the past six hours, and a toilet upstairs has been turned into an ocean; a real ocean, in a room, for as far as you can see. Every room, very slowly, is changing and each one has the potential to be very dangerous." There was something about the words he used- no, not the words- but more how it seemed as if he took great care in choosing each word; the subtle sound of panic in his voice.

A distant scream broke Holly's concentration and with a flash, she was being tugged to the back of the office by the man in the suit. She quickly pressed the buttons on the security keypad and shoved the door. Out the back, she found herself standing in the hallway, the long white hallway that looked the same as it ever did. Mr. Smith lifted up the metallic pen and the blue light flickered for a moment and burned out.

"No, no, no! Not now!" He shouted as he smacked his pen across his palm. "Well, guess this means we have to use good old intuition," and the pen went back into his coat pocket. He clapped his hands together and turned to Holly.

"Now, where is the highest point on this campus?"

"It's uh, The Tower, I guess." She thought about the looming brick building; desolate and intimidating. Built in the first days of the university, The Tower was meant to be a beacon of ingenuity but with over one hundred years since then, it had been reduced to huge empty rooms and storage closets.

"The Tower!? Phft," he shook his head," and you say we're not in England."

"Oh my god, we're not! We're in America. Kentucky. Lexington!"

"Oh, well. Can't say I come here too often."

Holly rolled her eyes. "Really? I wouldn't have guessed it."

"Well you're a bit cheeky, aren't you?" the man grinned. His face was bright and full, and Holly couldn't help but reciprocate. She was searching her brain for something to say, something to comprehend what was happening when another scream rang out, closer than before; a different voice but the same sound of agony.

"Right. It's moved down to this floor. We need to get going; to The Tower, yes?"

Holly hadn't come up with anything so when he grabbed her hand, she didn't fight back. Whatever was going on, she knew that she wanted to get out of the building. So she pulled him to the right and they were off, running down the long corridor past water fountains and vending machines, past doors and doors, so many doors, tall and short, misshaped, old and warped; doors that Holly had never seen before.

Holly came to a slow jog before stopping about halfway down and Mr. Smith turned to her, confused. "Wait, no. This… this doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't?"

"These doors," she pointed. "This hallway used to have maybe, I don't know, six doors tops. And now, look," she pointed in either direction and then lowered her hand to the wall in front of them, "they're everywhere. I mean, what's the purpose of that?!" She lifted her hand in the direction of a small two foot door covered in plastic and was reminded of a doggy-door.

"I just thought it was American or something." Holly scowled in response while he continued, "I mean, how fantastic is this?! I'd say if you looked in any one of these doors, there would be something wild going on inside. Look." He pulled Holly to the next door. Looking through the window of a white metal door, a room was on fire, but all of the contents burned bright green.

"Something is cutting holes in the fabric of reality, but it's not only to change what's current, but to add stuff." He looked down the hallway again and his eyes widened. "Lots of stuff."

He opened next door, ten feet tall with intricate carvings made up of six red panels. The light from the room burned Holly's eyes and as she went to step closer to adjust, Mr. Smith grabbed her arm.

"Don't go any closer."

Holly squinted and as the light dimmed, and three blurred dots focused into three huge beasts; half lion, half lizard. Holly cupped her hands over her mouth at the sight. The room was terribly narrow which made them so close that she could see the breath coming from the beasts in large clouds of mist and she could feel the heat rising from the sand below.

"What the hell are those?" Holly murmured, with hands still over her mouth.

Another scream broke out down the hallway.

"Enough chat. Allons-y!"

Holly ran for the door with the man right behind her and as she burst through to the lawn her heart sank to the pit of her stomach. The sun was gone. No clouds, just a white sky, bright and pressing down upon her. There was no time to stop; her fear kept her feet moving and she followed the memorized path, thinking only of The Tower. She could hear Mr. Smith right behind her as she weaved between buildings and past empty lawns; each step brought them closer.

A few years ago, when the university had lost its need of The Tower, the windows of the first two floors had been boarded up and all but the front doors had been chained. Now, parties in secret were held here throughout the summer months when students stayed in the town and had no place else to go. Keep out signs peeked out from wild vines and weeds while cobwebs hung like chandeliers from torn awnings. Mr. Smith reached the doors first and pulled. Nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

"Out of the way, it needs a security code!" Holly slid in front of the door, brushed off the keypad and lets her fingers follow the pattern she knew all too well. The correct combination was rewarded with the sharp sound of a click from the inside and with the strained efforts of both, the door slid open just enough to slide in. "To keep out all of the hooligans," she smiled as she pushed with her back against the frame. Mr. Smith grinned from ear to ear and walked in first, holding the door for her.

Still pushing, she shifted her position and stumbled inside. The heavy door creaked back to its closed position and the door automatically locked back; the darkness swallowed her. Her hands instinctively went out in front of her and as she shuffled her feet forward, her fingers ran into his back.

"Oi! Watch it!" he whispered.

"Sorry."

"Just a tick." A pale blue light bloomed in front of her face. "Now then, where are we?" The light blinked unsteadily, almost dancing in the darkness with Mr. Smith's voice. "Ah, yes."

She watched him move past her in the glow and without warning, the building's lights came on. Her head ached from the dim light of the few florescent bulbs that still worked. The room had an eerie presence to it with the electrical buzzing sound filling the space. Apart from the huge piles of broken office furniture and rusted file cabinets, the first floor was nothing but one colossal room. Faded scars from graffiti lined the walls and molded ceiling tiles hung from rafters twenty feet high.

"Why Saturday?" Mr. Smith asked as he walked around examining the room.

"Huh?"

"It's a Saturday, why were you in that office? You don't start working on Saturdays until after the Labor Crisis of 2109."

Holly watched him bound from one door to the next. "It's Finals Week. The only week we're open on the weekend and one person had to be here, so I volunteered. Did you say 2109?"

Mr. Smith edged around metal pipes jutting from the floor and ignored her question. "Now why would a young girl come into work, _voluntarily_, when there are loads of more exciting things to do?"

"I had other things to do. I knew no one else wanted to do it, so I offered. It was easier that way for everybody."

The man turned to her and said, "Everybody but you, eh? You had put off all of the things that young people do. You must be an excellent worker. Good priorities. " Holly knew sarcasm all too well.

He continued rummaging around, moving desks and tapping his pen on locked doors but Holly had had enough prodding and running.

"What does it matter that I'm here? I think the most important thing to ask is who are you? I work here, what are _you _doing here?" He remained silent as he awkwardly maneuvered around the room again, this time staring at the floor with a concentrated look; very concentrated. It was too late to warn him as he bumped into a massive cabinet and in the space and it seemed to take forever to meet with the ground. A booming sound broke through the air and its echoes shook the panels in the ceiling. Holly waved the dust away from her face.

"Sorry 'bout that. You can call me The Doctor."

"The Doctor? That's it?"

"Yep, that's it. And right now, if you could help me, I'm trying to find a way to get to the top floor."

"I'm Holly."

"What?"

"Holly, that's my name and… you've missed the button." Holly turned to the closest wall and pressed a button that had become all but invisible from the layers of dirt. "The only way of getting up to the top floor is the elevator and then a ladder to the roof. The stairs have been blocked off for years." She pressed the code into the keypad below the button. "I know it's probably not safe, but it's our only way up there."

"Ah, brilliant!" The Doctor smiled and leapt around the broken things in the floor and Holly smiled back. They stood silently as the doors slowly creaked open. The Doctor took one dramatized step inside and Holly stood in the doorway.

He took a big bounce and the elevator sagged and adjusted to the weight. "See Holly? Fine. Perfectly safe. Now, in we go," as he motioned her in. Holly stood still- no, there was no way that could be considered safe. The doors to the entrance of The Tower began to shake and both of their heads turned to the sound.

"No, really. Time to go." The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled. The doors closed with a slow creak and the elevator shifted its weight like an old man who had stood for far too long.


	3. Chapter 3

Dirty fingerprints littered the metal walls of the elevator. Holly could picture how shiny they used to be years and years ago when someone cleaned it every day. When did they close this building? How many years had passed since someone had been in here? And for that matter, how long had it been since someone had inspected it? Her lungs started to tighten and her breaths came from her chest in short, struggled puffs.

"I'm going to die", Holly breathed.

"No." The Doctor curved his lips together to press out a long 'O' sound at the end.

"Get it together Holly," she thought as she squeezed her eyes shut. Her brain tried to calm her body and when she opened her eyes, almost as if he had heard her thoughts, he turned to her.

"Old elevator. Very, very slow." He patted the wall like a parent would a child.

"I just… I wasn't expecting this when I came in to work today."

"'Course not. You were expecting to go into work and for things to be lovely. Maybe even have a bit of that social interaction you were hoping for." He raised an eyebrow to her.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let's just say that I know a lonely face when I see one." He looked at her with such a sad face and Holly found herself to be very embarrassed. She couldn't believe that someone she had never met could see how incredibly pathetic she was. She thought about why she came in to work; all she really wanted was to see people enjoying their day, maybe go so far as to have a conversation with someone.

_I could die in an elevator. Better now than never._ She searched her mind very hard to think of something meaningful to say, something elegant and clever; she hadn't really spoken to someone in such a long time. She opened her mouth and the words formed in her brain too quickly, racing from her throat to her teeth, past her lips, and into the air. They came like a rush of water; fluid and constant.

"You spoke French earlier. French is beautiful. I went to Quebec once, in Canada. Beautiful city, there's a castle and a wall that surrounds the old city." In her mind she screamed at herself to stop talking, "I had pizza when I was there, Canadian bacon is just weird. Why would someone like sweet pizza?" It took forever for her brain to stop the signal to her lips. Her mouth shut suddenly and her face turned red. The Doctor had turned around to her by then, wide eyed. _Good job, Holly._

Silence.

She pressed her lips together, pushed her hair behind her left ear, and looked down to the floor. "Uhm, do you speak French?"

"Every now and then. You?" The elevator shuddered as it passed another floor. He jerked his head up at the tremor and they both stared at each other. Waiting. Listening for some kind of warning but the elevator continued.

A squeaky tone of panic came from her throat, "I've had a few years of practice, studied it in college." She placed her hands up against the wall and tried to brace herself. _Remember to breathe_.

"An academic in my midst and you're a desk girl?"

"Well, it's not that bad. As soon as I graduated it was offered to me, so I took it. The history field is far from popular these days." She thought The Doctor's eyes were going to pop out of his head.

"No!" and again his lips curved to make that elongated 'o' sound. "A history degree? Oh, that's brilliant!"

"Right, I'm sure you can see how I'm putting it to use as, what'd you call it? A desk girl?"

"Oh, but I love a good Historian! So many things to know, all the stories you'll tell." He tilted his head to the side, "Plutarch was bit of a bore, though." Holly laughed, although she was unsure of whether she was laughing at how crazy he was or the fact that she was in an elevator with a crazy person.

"Well, it's true. Always scribbling, never adding to the conversation. But Tacitus, oh! Got some of my best jokes from him."

"The next time you talk to him, tell him he needs to finish _The Annals _for my final paper," she joked. He threw his head back and a guttural laugh filled the space. She shook her head in disbelief, "I honestly can't believe you got that."

"It's a long story, but I'd blame Pliny instead. Always was the jealous type." Holly was about to ask him how he came up with such outrageous responses, but before she could, the elevator grinded to a stop. The bell that sounded was so unexpected that Holly jumped.

"Finally." They turned to the doors and waited. Holly leaned against wall again to steady herself and The Doctor's hand clasped patiently behind him. The doors stayed shut and he rocked back on his feet. Silence.

"Pulley systems, so interesting." The Doctor said as Holly stared at him. "I've missed these old things." He patted the elevator one more time. He chuckled, "takes me back to when I was passing by Giza. The necropolis was just going up and Khufu was raving abou-"

"It's stuck isn't it?" Holly broke in. He leaned in and placed his hands on the doors.

"Yep."

Holly put her head in her hands. "Wait, No!" He pulled the silver the pen out from his breast pocket again and shook it furiously.

"Right, a pen will totally help. Why didn't I think of that?" Holly grumbled.

He turned suddenly to her and with a very appalled look on his face lifted it and said, "Pen?! This, _this _is no pen!" He put it up to his face, stared angrily at it and then began smacking it against his hand.

Holly crossed her arms, "it looks like a pen."

"It's not a pen! It's a sonic screwdriver!" He held it up to his ear as if he were listening to it. "And it would be so amazing if it would work right now."

"Well what does it do?"

He fluttered his hands around as he thought of an explanation. "Lots of things; very _advanced_ things that I'll explain later. Most importantly, it can open these doors. Aha!" A blue light twinkled from its top and The Doctor turned back to the door with a look of triumph. He ran it around the elevator doors, left to right, top to bottom and then right down the middle. With a slight push from him, the doors parted. Holly couldn't believe it had actually worked, but before she could remark, he grabbed her hand and yanked her into the room. What a room it was.

"Don't. Touch. Anything."

There were green and red and yellow lights that ran from the floor to a ceiling so high she couldn't see its end. The two of them went off in separate directions and walked deep in to the room. A few steps from the elevator, the sound of a loud blast of foul-smelling smoke would erupt every few seconds from a wooden box. Holly held her breath until she passed. She walked around sheets of aluminum that had been placed together at the center of the building in the shape of an octagon and stared at cylindrical glass tubes where miniature lightning bolts would stimulate the air inside. She bent down to watch brown goo bubble out from a rock the size of a watermelon on the floor. She stood up, looked around and it dawned on her. This was all very, very real; the doors in the hallway, the beasts, the sky, this room.

"Oh my god!"

The Doctor popped up from a set of tables with a pair of glasses on and the screwdriver in his hand, bright blue reflected off his face. "What?"

"This is real!"

"This," she threw her arms out, " is _**real**_."

The Doctor smiled from ear to ear.

"Took you long enough."


End file.
